So you’re having doubts believing you can still tap into a successful career? These days of creating a career may seem like a journey of the past. But you’re wrong. If you want your purpose, skills, and dreamwork life to be an authentic brand of your blended self, don’t stop creating your career success plan. Are you up to the challenge of changing your attitude with eye-opening facts showing you today more than ever is the time for career success?

Being transparent, one of the industries I’m a part of is lagging horribly behind to get back in the economy due to the coronavirus crisis. Our business model’s greatest success is with humans in close contact! With part of my career success being disrupted; I’ve had the opportunity to gain traction in another area using my transferable senior-level skills. I know my life-long career + vision will continue to be successful because I keep certain key principles foremost in mind. Use these 5 tacit tools to maintain good skepticism.

1. Career Vision Success is 20/20. What do you see right now? Having 20/20 career vision means you can endure the present work environment with an eagle eye on the future. Having the right leadership skills will keep you balanced throughout your career journey. You will remain sober and fulfilled.

In my 30-year long career experience, I’ve had to learn how to delegate so I could best focus on where my company was going; not just where we were. In order to delegate effectively, I cultivated my personal career success technique by becoming more decisive. It was scary at first, but years ago I realized my team was depending on my decision to go left or right, so I managed my blind spots. How do you manage those? Know your career weaknesses + strengths. Change a weakness into a strength or partner with a co-worker or colleague or team to support your weakness with their talent in that area. Continue to sharpen your strength with ongoing reskilling + a growth mindset. No growth; no clear vision of career success.

As a career visionary, you learn how to lead with a balanced mindset that is able to see the near-approaching directional signs + the far-reaching hills (or valleys) ahead. If you’re authentic, you will always have the human support you need to succeed in your career exploits. Once your team sees how resilient you are, they’ll trust the visionary process with bright eyes for the next career course you’re setting. Your learning will be continuous, but you will build a successful career as your career vision becomes clearer. Learn the right leadership skills to masterfully absorb what you need to have a 20/20 career vision.

2. Humility influences your career journey. Once you have aligned your core values, the unique profile of passion, skills + temperament with your purpose-filled career journey, extremely successful stints will unfold in your dream career.

Be ready for some tough blows. Losing a big contract + client, losing a star employee, missing the customer explosion due to an over-saturated market you didn’t foresee, having your business idea fall flatter than silly putty on today’s headlines…there are endless examples you can give me of big bumps you’ve experienced along your career path. Your character will be monitored internally, externally, knowingly, or unknowingly. A humble leadership character will upgrade your career growth process. I believe career opportunities flow toward you more easily when you are emotionally neutral. I even believe you should expect some surprising individual + collective team success bounce backs when you lead with humility.

My idea of Career Success bounce back is when you financially recover from a major project or business failure without self-aggrandizing actions or thoughts. Have you ever experienced career recovery and felt like you had imposter syndrome? It’s okay; stay humble. This leadership character will remind you that no one is perfect. Once you become comfortable with imperfection, your career relationships will grow into more meaningful ones. Let the perfectionist walls come down! Notice how your relationships will lean more toward building trust. Why? Because you’ll acknowledge that you need one another. It’s empowering to embrace the agape love of another career success creator. Those powerful bonds will be there when you need help thriving + surviving in your career. Your circle will give you the strength to overcome a crisis and you’ll prove powerfully able to rally your team with hopeful confidence.

3. Retain expansive knowledge about your career industry + trends. Successful career creators follow their career industry closely+ stay abreast of what’s trending. Do you know the top information sources to identify your specific industry trends? What print journals, think tank communities, online resources + platforms, networking organizations are you researching weekly, if not daily, to stay informed? Know your credible forecast gateways to follow. This will help you stay knowledgeable + make the best decisions to maintain career success. Look at websites that keep you in-the-know on specific industry data and statistics as well as overall market research to determine the best way to communicate with your target audience and work collaborators. IBISWorld is an example of a great resource for industry trends, research + data. Also, stay updated with major influencers in your industry through their social media platforms and blogs.

What institutional value + career path benefits will you obtain in the next 3, 5, 10 years to help you sustain success? This is absolutely the time to discover free + paid assistance to upgrade your knowledge in your industry + in the next professional arena you’re moving toward. Even during a crisis, you should be seeing career growth. Creativity is birthed through a crisis. Start within + broaden your creative boundaries!

Focus on the benefits that concern your target audience + clients; how will you regain their interest in the work you do? Focus on the value-added resources + talents you offer. How will those resources + transferable skills help you survive during lean times? Also, increase your understanding of which business metrics matter most to your career development + the business you’re invested in. Become an active participant in how you can help increase successful results.

4. Complacency weakens a successful career. What is a rigid, fixed mind-set? Associate yourself with career creators that desire growth; not stagnation or status-quo. What strategic partnerships do you have in your industry that can comfortably challenge you to grow in newer + trend-setting innovative ways? If you find yourself becoming complacent about your career, start monitoring what you’re currently working on. If the project or task doesn’t push you out of your comfort zone, start getting in touch with your creative side. Creativity is one the top soft skills you need now. It takes work experimenting, exploring, failing, learning… so this is a sure way to break any smug ideas that where you are in your career is fine for the next year or 3.

Communicate regularly with your career creative colleagues to keep recommendations flowing both ways. Regularly visualizing your success + communicating it out loud can facilitate your next career move from a conceptual to a concrete plan. This will also assist you in continuously transforming your leadership mindset without resistance. What an encouraging way to ultimately gain respect from your colleagues for your driving focus. The brilliant key is never to get complacent and fail to think about the future of your career. Career skeptics will see you actively powering through and impacting others to keep their careers set in motion.

5. Review your purpose for work + life regularly. In uncertain times, it’s critical you reevaluate where you are + where you’re going. Dreams can pivot + you must be okay with change.

Here are great questions I use in my stillness quiet time to reflect: Do you believe you were born for the career you’re in? Are you still enthusiastic about your industry? Do you believe in the skills you bring to this industry?

It’s healthy (and cleansing) to deal with any doubts as soon as they surface by regularly reviewing your short + long-term goals. Understand you are a “Blended Self” that’s continuing to develop throughout your career journey. It’s wise to analyze the 3-year, 5-year + 10-year goals you’ve set in your blended plan. Can you still differentiate your career from a job? This is great indicator of how well your blended life is moving forward! Now this may seem a bit like uncharted blending territory for you, but ask yourself that question wherever you are right now in your blended life; not before the coronavirus crisis.

Ponder your personal life stages, your marital goals, family dreams along with your levels of career accomplishment. This will help you sharpen the big-picture perspective. Be transparent with yourself. Stay curious about how you’ll confidently steer the next part of your life journey + career vision.

Develop these transformative strategies + maintain an open-mind about the future of your career. Fearlessly use your passion, talents + temperament to have the career you were born for!

Living Life Today a believer!

Want more advice on how to build believable career success? Get FREE career advice in your inbox, subscribe to our newsletter Sticky Note Success!

© EJ Encalarde. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission, from this blog’s author and/or owner, is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to EJ Encalarde, LLC, with proper and specific direction to the original content at ejencalarde.com.

How to Sell Career Success to a Skeptic